Sports & Entertainment

Chances are you’ve been following the Washington Redskins epic lately. You don’t have to be a football fan to be fascinated by the story of a team owner who has managed, in 10 short years, to squander generations of good will from an area that came together on little besides the adoration of the Redskins. That has been frittered away thanks to one lousy decade of astoundingly inept management under owner Dan Snyder.

This really was an easy call. Boot Rush off the field. Not because they are Democrats or liberals. Not because they are Barack Obama’s buddies. Heck, most of these owners are big-time Republicans. As Michael Wilbon put it: “A few are so far to the right politically they think Limbaugh is liberal.”

Nope. Pure and simple, the NFL could not stomach his racial slurs over many years. Taking on Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb, lamenting the number of black players (“NFL looks like a game between the Bloods and the Crips”), racial attacks against Barack Obama and Sonia Sotomayor — after all, ESPN fired him.

I mean, what was Rush Limbaugh thinking? Did he really believe that his comments about race that many consider outright bigotry would be forgotten, particularly in a league where two-thirds of the rosters are African-American?

Was he really surprised that superstar Donovan McNabb had not forgotten Limbaugh’s assessment just six years ago that he was “overrated … because … what we have here is a little social concern in the NFL. The media has been very desirous that a black quarterback can do well — black coaches and black quarterbacks doing well.”

In general, the media spends too much time talking about Rush Limbaugh, but the idea that Limbaugh might buy the St. Louis Rams of the NFL is too tempting to resist commenting on, but only because it combines a couple of my favorite topics: sports, economics and politics.
 
The essential question is whether Limbaugh’s propensity for racially and politically insensitive remarks make him unfit to be an owner of an NFL team. On one hand, you can argue that the St. Louis Rams are private property and society should not start conditioning ownership of private property on a person’s legal speech habits. Conversely, you can argue that there is a different standard between a person’s opinions expressed as a political talk radio host and the political opinions expressed as an owner of an NFL franchise. An NFL franchise might not be deserving of public money (though many do), but they often capture a community’s trust, dedication and identity. Granted, it’s not as large a standard as there is between what a talk radio host can say on air and what is permissible for an appellate justice to express in public.

It’s a busy news cycle. There’s big news on healthcare, big news on Afghanistan, big news on the economy.

But let’s be honest. You walk into any restaurant or bar today and that’s not what they’re talking about. No, in the real world people are talking about the biggest issue of them all: Rush Limbaugh’s trying to buy the St. Louis Rams.

"And through all of the heartache, and the attention, and the embarrassment, I still feel like I did the right thing, and now also — because what can it hurt? — once again I'd like to apologize to the former governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin. I'm terribly, terribly sorry. So there we go," he added to cheers from the crowd.
— on CNN’s Political Ticker

But there is something missing in the center when the late-night comic, in apologizing again about the insult he hurled at Sarah Plain, uses these two phrases in the same sentence: "I still feel like I did the right thing" and "once again I’d like to apologize to the former governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin.”

Because if he still feels he did the right thing, there is no need to apologize and apologizing would be wrong. Sarah Palin wouldn’t.

After a summer of overheated and self-righteous zealotry, Washington was desperate for some consistent levity to lighten the mood. Luckily, Northwest D.C.’s own Anthony Irwin Kornheiser has returned to the airways after a long layoff to deliver some of the smartest two hours of programming anywhere.

The show airs on the Daniel Snyder-owned ESPN radio affiliate, but it rarely focuses on sports. The show is much more likely to wander through politics, reality TV, movie reviews and Kornheiser’s hilariously neurotic musings. There’s also plenty of sage insight from prominent pols like Newsweek’s Howard Fineman and “the smartest man in Washington,” uber-lawyer Abbe Lowell, but there’s also the absurd randomness of having Eugene Robinson talking about "American Idol" and James Carville picking obscure college football betting lines.

The definitive detail might be the scene in "Charade" where Audrey Hepburn snaps the filter off her cigarette in disgust. Only the weak or inauthentic smoked filters. That day has made a comeback with “Mad Men.” Everyone smokes, but real men smoke Luckys. Some have reported that it is the best TV show ever, at a time when TV writing — "The Sopranos," "House," "Lost" — transcends movies in skill and imagination.

I made the point in the first essay I had published, an op-ed in The Philadelphia Inquirer back in 1977, when the anti-smoking crusade had taken on all of the umbrage of a Gandhi hunger strike, that smoking was bad for you but quitting was worse, as it formed self-righteousness and pretension and the sense that you were doing something when you weren’t doing anything. That may be why there is such freshness to a story about the hardworking and hard-playing in the days when drinking started at 4 in the afternoon. Earlier for top executives. Soon after it passed they — Jimmy Carter — would tax the lunchtime martinis.

President Barack Obama went to Copenhagen, Denmark, on Thursday to persuade the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to select Chicago as the site for the 2016 Olympic Games. The president’s past visits to Europe, where he was greeted by cheering crowds, convinced him that his personal charisma would sway the committee to select Chicago. After all, on earlier trips to Egypt and Europe, he prepared the way by apologizing for America’s past foreign policy. Last week, before the U.N., he even offered to unilaterally disarm America. He must have deluded himself that these apologies and offers would convince IOC members to love Chicago as much as their countrymen love Obama.

To understand why Republicans keep losing elections, don’t miss the post by Republican pundit Cheri Jacobus that seems almost gleeful, cheerful and ecstatic that America lost our Olympic bid.

Jacobus is bidding for a prime leadership role in the "hope America fails" faction of the GOP. Her near-ecstasy that Chicago did not win the Olympics is offensive to a good patriotic American like myself who always roots for the USA. I did my first year of law school in Chicago before finishing here. I love the city, I love the people, I love the town. Even as a New Yorker used to winning championships with the Yankees, I will be thrilled when Chicago's beloved Cubs have their miracle year.